About

April Grayson combines her commitment to racial equity and social justice with her passion for storytelling, Documentary fieldwork, and art practice.

Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, April graduated from Millsaps College with a B.A. in English, a minor in Psychology, and a concentration in Women's Studies. She got her start in film and video during a program in Documentary Video at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she lived for more than a decade. In 2009 she earned a Master of Fine Art (MFA) in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute.

April's experience growing up in the Mississippi Delta, the daughter of a public school superintendent in the era following the court-ordered desegregation of public schools, shaped her desire to combine the pursuit of racial justice with a love of storytelling and art.

Over the past two decades, April has worked in documentary film and video, oral history practice, and arts education, and in the racial equity field as a facilitator, trainer, and consultant. Much of her racial equity work has been through her affiliation with the Alluvial Collective (formerly known as the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation), where she facilitates dialogue and equity processes, leads anti-racism workshops and training, oversees oral history and documentary projects, and assists with restorative/transformative justice projects. (Read more about the Lafayette Community Remembrance Project.)

April has worked on several films and television documentaries, including Martin Scorsese’s PBS series “The Blues,” with directors Wim Wenders, Sam Pollard, and Charles Burnett, and “The Murder of Emmett Till” by Stanley Nelson. She has also worked extensively in community-based documentary and oral history work.. Her oral history project on the integration of the University of Mississippi School of Law and Medical School, in conjunction with Kate Medley, won the Mississippi Historical Society’s Oral History award. Her short films have shown in film festivals, galleries, and museums in the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, and South America.

April and her family have lived in Mississippi, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver BC, and India. She splits her time between Mississippi and Northern New Mexico., She works in communities and spaces in the United States and abroad. In 2021, she was named a TECE fellow, focused on transatlantic youth civic education.